


Time to Wake Up

by SegaBarrett



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25500418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Charlotte, putting the pieces together.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7
Collections: Every Woman 2020





	Time to Wake Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Westworld, and I make no money from this.

_You’re waking up._

That’s always her first thought – there is always a sense of narration dancing around her mind. The part of her that’s trapped in, the one that always remains a mystery but, well, there she has it. She’s waking up.

It isn’t as if she really sleeps – not the way that the other-her had before, but appearances are everything in this world (just like Dolores told her they were in the park) so she climbs into bed and stares at the wall and must somehow switch off in a way that the lets the time pass.

Time is always passing.

And there’s no sense in keeping every wonder, every statement, every narration hidden, because after all, Dolores can always hear her.

***

It’s odd to be alone in her own brain, the brain that doesn’t quite work the way that _theirs_ does but works with a clockwork click, a chime. She goes through the motions and stands before people in meetings and it’s like she’s watching a video.

It’s like she’s back in the park, though she – this her – wasn’t ever there, not the way that Dolores was. But it makes sense with the way Dolores permeates her entire being, the way that she is always watching and waiting.

Charlotte is afraid of her, yes, but there’s something else too.

She wants her to be proud of her.

Is this the way _they_ always feel?

***

Charlotte realizes that she does not get sick the day that she sees her son through a cold. That’s something that only happens to them. Allergies, too.

She tells Dolores the next time she sees her, in wonder. That other Charlotte got runny noses and scraped knees, got hurt for real even though she seemed to have never let it show, a machine on the outside instead of all the way through.

Dolores looks at her and cocks her head to the side.

“Why would you want that?”

***

When Dolores is next to her, that’s all that she can see, all that she can feel. It’s suffocating, in a way, and intoxicating.

Dolores is the sun around which she revolves, and she doesn’t think she could exist otherwise. 

She wonders if she could escape, even if she tried. Maybe she could take her son and go. Where, though? Where exists beyond the reach of Dolores?

And would she even want to be?

She may not sleep, but she tosses and turns. 

Turns in revolution, fixed to a beam. To a latch.

***

One night, she awakes and Dolores is there in the room staring at her, eyes wild. She wonders where Dolores get this feeling, the passion. It had been programmed at first, hadn’t it, that Wyatt part, but Charlotte knows there’s something deeper, too.  
Something underneath, and the kind of thing that scares Charlotte, even though she shouldn’t be able to be afraid.

Maybe that’s the other Charlotte trying to claw her way to the surface. From what she can tell, Charlotte Hale was a woman who not only lived in fear but seemed to thrive in it.

And the other Charlotte is scary. She feels a lot of things and she never shows any of them – she feels things but allows herself to kill despite it, to eliminate the competition and then worry about how her son is doing in school.

Is Dolores like that, Charlotte wonders, is Dolores sending her out to die because it is the way to get what she wants, even though she loves her in a way not unlike a mother would love a daughter. 

She could walk away. It was possible – maybe Dolores couldn’t find her everywhere. Maybe there’s somewhere she could hide. But even if she ran, what would she do without Dolores’ guidance?

Like a mother, guiding. A teacher, teaching. Telling her what she needed to do.

Who else but Dolores could show her the way?

***

She meets Dolores at the edge of town. At least, she considers it must be the edge of town, for it feels deserted and lonely. Maybe the whole world outside the park is deserted and lonely.

“We need to mobilize,” Dolores tells her, and she can catch sight of that boy, the one she’s using in her plan, out of the corner of her eye. He’s little more than a kid.

Charlotte wonders what Dolores would do if she ever told her no, if she ever decided she needed to break out on her own.

Wasn’t that what Dolores was trying to fight for, anyway? So they didn’t need to be used as playthings.

She hears the kid talking about how they all need to have the right to decide. She hears Dolores talking about how it used to be before – the horrible things that _they_ had been able to do before.

But she doesn’t remember. She wasn’t there.

So she says nothing.

***

Charlotte’s car explodes while she is running, and she emerges. 

She does not emerge unscathed. Of course she does not.

She climbs to the top of the nearest building to watch the world explode; because of course she had already been there.

Throughout it all, she tries to find it in herself to hate Dolores. That should be easy, now – shouldn’t it? She has stacked up the reasons into a house of cards who can only serve to come tumbling down. 

Maybe those are the places where it doesn’t all match up like it should.

It does in Caleb Nichol, Dolores’ boy-toy. He is human, after all. Maybe Charlotte should have snatched him off the Earth and taken him apart to see how he ticks.  
But he had been important to Dolores, and that had made him important to Charlotte too.

Some days it just got too damned confusing to keep track of which synapse fire was supposed to be which. Which Charlotte she was supposed to be at any given time.

Which Dolores she was supposed to be at any given time.

Pretending to be human was just too exhausting.

Better, she decides, to pull up a chair and watch everything burn down below.

Hell. It’s what Charlotte would have done, after all.


End file.
